The School of Global Environmental Sustainability (SoGES) at Colorado State University announced awards for its Global Challenges Research Teams and four Resident Faculty Fellows from a competitive field of proposals submitted the winter of 2016. The awards encourage interdisciplinary understanding of complex global environmental issues, foster collaborative cross-campus partnerships, and support sustainability research at CSU.

The School funds innovative sustainability research that addresses grand challenges, involving faculty members and researchers from across colleges. Projects must target all six of the following: climate change and energy, food security, environmental institutions and governance, sustainable communities, land and water resources, and biodiversity, conservation, and management.

“These highly competitive grants show a breadth of imagination, innovation, and integration that is needed to solve the grand challenges of sustainability.” said Diana Wall, SoGES director and professor, Department of Biology. “This year’s interdisciplinary teams and fellows will address cutting edge research questions that matter to our future.”

Global Challenges Research Teams:

• (Over) Consumption: The Culprit Causing an Environmental Crisis in Your Closet. Principal Investigators: Sonali Diddi, Katherine Leigh, and Ruoh-Nan (Terry) Yan, Department of Design and Merchandising; Vickie Bajtelsmit, Department of Finance; Kelly Martin, Department of Marketing; Katie McShane, Department of Philosophy; and Brittany Bloodhart, Department of Atmospheric Science. This multidisciplinary research team seeks to create, expand, and publicize the sustainable impact of the overconsumption of soft goods, specifically clothing. The team will direct its efforts to develop sustainable solutions, reduce the magnitude of post-consumer textile landfill wastes, and disseminate findings to the public.
• Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the Anthropocene. Principal Investigators: Neil Grigg, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Melinda Laituri, Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability; Sheryl Magzamen, Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences; Stephanie Malin and Stacia Ryder, Department of Sociology; and Dimitris Stevis, Department of Political Science. This team will grow the environmental justice community at CSU and develop regional, national and global networks in their efforts to explore how and why equity and environmental justice are important elements of the study of the environment, public health, and sustainability. Next year, they will host a symposium on “Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the Anthropocene” highlighting transdisciplinary and international research, and develop an Environmental Justice Workshop Training Series.

“The Environmental Justice CSU team is thrilled to continue creating space to share environmental justice research and experiences, both on CSU’s campus and with Colorado community members.” said Stephanie Malin, PI of Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the Anthropocene. “This year, we hope our trainings and symposium continue to nurture the community in northern Colorado, facilitate national and international connections, and help us lay the foundation for a Center for Environmental Justice at CSU.”

Four Resident Fellows also receive support from the School to advance studies in global environmental sustainability:

• Yan Vivian Li, Department of Design and Merchandising. Li’s fellowship will investigate the fate and transport of new glass or carbon nanoparticles and demonstrate the potential use of nanoparticles as novel model tracers in water and environmental research.
• Stephen P. Mumme, Department of Political Science. Mumme’s project examines the politics and institutional development of U.S.-Mexico management of transboundary water resources since the landmark 1944 U.S.-Mexico Water Treaty.  He will develop a series of papers and complete a book related to this work.
• Craig Trumbo, Department of Journalism and Media Communication. Trumbo’s work will focus on the socioeconomic response to combined extreme weather events that have occurred since 1960. He will integrate that research into his ongoing work on risk-related social responses to natural and anthropogenic hazards. Trumbo will also begin to develop an undergraduate course on the role of individual and societal responses to risk in the domains of natural and anthropogenic hazards relevant to sustainability.
• Andrea Williams, International Studies. Williams will focus on completing her book, Planting Politics: French Forestry, Pastoralism, and Empire in the Nineteenth-century Mediterranean World as part of her research into the nineteenth-century French forest regime and how it dramatically transformed human relations within and beyond the borders of France.

Williams, director of International Studies, said that she is delighted to join the SoGES community as a Resident Fellow. “I look forward to sharing ideas with other fellows and community members, and gaining feedback on my work from multidisciplinary perspectives,” she said.

About the School of Global Environmental Sustainability

The School of Global Environmental Sustainability is at the core of a growing number of exciting sustainability initiatives in research and education at Colorado State University. SoGES serves as a hub to connect CSU’s community of scholars and practitioners interested in applying interdisciplinary perspectives to large-scale environmental, economic, and social questions not easily addressed through traditional approaches. For more information, go to http://sustainability.colostate.edu.